In my job as a teacher and consultant, I have seen how parents (including myself) get confused when it comes to children's 'theatrics'. Many times, parents cannot understand why their 2-year-old goes into a terrible tantrum every time she is put in her car seat while her brother who is now 4 has never had that attitude. At other times, parents find it so annoying that their children do not want to join in the ballet lesson that they usually enjoy so much - not until the last 15 minutes of the session. As a fingerprint analyst, I have met hundreds of parents with similar problems . . . getting lost in 'translation' when raising their children.
I find all my consultation sessions interesting and enlightening but there is one that I find very touching. It is a session with a mother of a six-year-old girl who, according to her mom, is unpredictable and difficult to deal with. All through the consultation session, the mother could not restrain herself from laughing and crying at the same time because at that moment she felt that she had finally found the 'manual' she could refer to when she needed to understand her little girl.
Her six-year-old girl really loves ballet. She always looks forward to her ballet lessons but there are times when she refuses to participate as soon as she enters the class. She just sits and watches others. Her mom is often frustrated and, on the day that we met, was at the edge of her patience. She was going to call it quit to the ballet lesson.
In the session, we found out that the girl has a high need for comfort. She needs to 'warm up' before doing an activity. She needs to be comfortable and she needs to start from something familiar before moving on to a new thing. Her mom then realized that most of the time, when the girl refused to join in, it was because they had to start with something new or something that she was not really familiar with. However, she would readily take part in the dance as soon as she heard a song that she liked or when she recognized the dance that she had learned before.
Another thing that came to light was the reason why her daughter often backs down from challenging tasks. She will not even try. It's like losing the battle before it even begins. It turns out that she is the type of person who always wants to do things in the best way possible and the best result is her goal. So, when she sees the goal as being too hard or challenging, she will not even try for fear that she will fail or her work will not be as good as she wants it to be. After talking about this, she realizes that instead of verbally forcing her child to try and do something, she can actually help her see that, most of the time, it is the effort that matters. Quality will come later.
I have talked to a lot of parents and none of those talks have passed without me learning something valuable. I am always reminded that everybody is born unique. It is not fair for us to force our children to do things our way. When we can really understand our kids, we can have better communication with them. At the end of the day it is always very rewarding to see how parents realize that understanding their children is the first and most important tool in enjoying the journey that they have with their children.
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